Omer Tene

Omer Tene is an Associate Professor at the College of Management School of Law, Rishon Le Zion, Israel, and a legal consultant admitted to practice in Israel and New York. He consults the Israeli government, data protection authority and private sector businesses, including Fortune 100 companies, on privacy, data protection and law and technology. He was appointed by the Israeli Minister of Justice as Member of the National Privacy Protection Council and is a member of the advisory board of the Future of Privacy Forum; European advisory board of IAPP; and Editorial Board of the International Data Privacy Law (Oxford University Press). He headed the Steering Committee for the 32nd annual conference of privacy and data protection commissioners. He is a graduate of the JSD and LL.M. programs at NYU School of Law and received an MBA degree from INSEAD as well as LL.M. and LL.B. degrees from Tel Aviv University. Omer Tene was an associate at the New York office of Debevoise & Plimpton and at the Paris office of Fried Frank and a Senior Research Fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law in London, where he directed the Data Protection Group. He published articles in English, Hebrew and French on privacy and data protection and comparative financial regulation.

Privacy does not cause airplanes to crash; neither does pilot depression. The wave of criticism against Germany’s strict privacy laws in the aftermath of the findings following the calamitous fate of Germanwings Flight 9525 is misguided and quite possibly dangerous.

The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) resounding victory over Wyndham Worldwide Corporation in a U.S. District Court paves the way for increasing privacy and data security action by the agency, which over the past decade has asserted itself as the most forceful and well-respected privacy enforcement authority in the world.

Few people personify the field they work in as much as Christopher Kuner. As a lawyer, European-American, academic and professor, and longtime leader of the ICC, Kuner straddles the fault lines of the privacy world with ease.

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One would think privacy was a concept that Justice Antonin Scalia disliked. After all, how could a textualist, who firmly believed in lawyers’ obligation to follow the text, respect a concept as nebulous and blurry edged as privacy? A concept whose very meaning continues to befuddle lawyers, political philosophers and social scientists more than a century after it was introduced into legal jargon by Louis Brandeis, another Supreme Court giant to come?

Facebook's announcement — establishing guidelines, review processes, training and enhanced transparency for research projects — marks another milestone in the emergence of data ethics as a crucial component of corporate governance programs.

With the proliferation of personal data generated from smartphones, apps, social networks and ubiquitous sensors, companies have come under increasing pressure to put in place internal institutional review processes more befitting of academic philosophy departments than corporate boardrooms.

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"“Something of this magnitude getting passed through unanimously in both chambers is really astounding,” said Omer Tene, chief knowledge officer of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, in an interview with Adweek.

"There are probably as many answers to those question as there are supervisory authorities (SAs), and there are many, notes Omer Tene, vice president and chief knowledge officer of the International Association of Privacy Professionals. Tene points out that there are 28 different EU member states, and not only might they have individual federal authorities, but they may also have a dozen more for individual states - similar to the US system. Different authorities have different priorities and different "appetites" for litigation or punitive action, he says."

"Even if Europe persuades other countries to adopt its policies, it will be hard to ensure the laws work, said Omer Tene, a vice president at the International Association of Privacy Professionals, a trade group that tracks global privacy regulation.

“It’s one thing to have rules on the books,” said Mr. Tene. “It’s quite another thing to implement these rules on the ground.”"

"Many will insist it’s all de-identified and anonymized, said Omer Tene, VP and chief knowledge officer at the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

“But drill a bit deeper and you’ll find that while they might not have direct identifiers like a person’s name or social security number, they do collect, process and store personal data under GDPR,” he said."

What harms are privacy laws designed to prevent? How are people injured when corporations, governments, or other individuals collect, disclose, or use information about them in ways that defy expectations, prior agreements, formal rules, or settled norms? How has technology changed the nature of privacy harm?

Solutions to many pressing economic and societal challenges lie in better understanding data. New tools for analyzing disparate information sets, called Big Data, have revolutionized our ability to find signals amongst the noise. Big Data techniques hold promise for breakthroughs ranging from better health care, a cleaner environment, safer cities, and more effective marketing. Yet, privacy advocates are concerned that the same advances will upend the power relationships between government, business and individuals, and lead to prosecutorial abuse, racial or other profiling, discrimination, redlining, overcriminalization, and other restricted freedoms.

The Future of Privacy Forum, in partnership with the Application Developers Alliance and the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, will host the App Developer Privacy Summit to discuss “The Complex App Ecosystem.” The event will examine the important privacy challenges and opportunities facing the app ecosystem and will include app developers, platforms, advertisers and privacy experts who will discuss how to ensure a trusted consumer environment for continued growth in the dynamic app market.

Video of the first session from the Big Data & Privacy: Making Ends Meet conference held on September 10, 2013. The event was co-hosted by the Future of Privacy Forum and Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society.

Professor Omer Tene, privacy expert in law and technology, sat down with TAP to discuss the risks big data poses to privacy and the challenges to existing privacy rules. Additionally, he proposes enabling individuals to have useful access to their data.